And I am glad that it is not. Of course I am talking about podcasting. This was brought home for me earlier this week. More on that in a minute.

In the early days of podcasting and even a little now, not quite as much though, it was easy to find radio jocks and their management discounting podcasting as “ham radio” or ametuer hour. In the media (which they own and are) they would blast podcasting as a flash in the pan that would not have any impact on their businesses.

Of course a few months later, around April or May, radio stations began a campaign to explain how great radio was. During this $28 million campaign they were attempting to raise the awareness of the customer that the first place they are likely to hear anything; music, news or some morning jock making a prank phone call that it will be on one of their stations pumped directly into your car or radio at work.

This seems to be a reaction to the growing popularity of not only podcasting but the portable device evolution that seems to have passed radio by. Put these two things together and you have a powerful potion that has left the radio giant staggering on a nearly desserted island (maybe an isthmus as we speak) full of other naysayers that discount the impact that these two are having on their industry.

Skip ahead two months, Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting start zapping radio stations from coast to coast and turning them into broadcasting iPods on “shuffle". Well organized and market specific iPods that came to being after months of piloting smaller radio stations “that play anything” (almost anything). The new shufflers are in every small and major market now trying to maintain the waning listenership with playlists formulated from focus. Again, another losing proposal.

I was asked during a radio interview, “Is podcasting good for radio?” My response, “It’s great for radio!” As their reation has been to imitate what has driven listeners away from the air waves, they are still stumbling around in the dark as the solution to their problem is infront of their eyes: innovate, come up with somthing new.

Now back to earlier this week, Monday to be exact, I was suprised on my way home from work. Yes I have an MP3 player in my car, not a portable one, a lame burn your MP3’s to disc and then play them back. I now have over 100 discs floating around my car and can’t stand to listen to another one of them and refuse to burn another for a while.

So I am forced back into the waiting arms of radio to make noise as I commute to work in my car. In the morning when NPR was running another story that didn’t need my attention I started to flip stations and caught 94.7 the Zone’s morning show. The Zone is a hard rock station that prides itself on louder, faster, more skin and hairspray than a babysitter in the 80’s.

The morning guys were complaining that they didn’t have tickets to give away for a show that the radio station was sponsoring and then cut to a commercial. Right then I was in the parking garage and shut the radio and car off and walked into work.

I put in my day, head home and turn on NPR which is running same story that made me change stations in the morning. So I change over to The Zone and Nancy Sinatra starts to come through the speakers.

I started laughing to hard that I began to cry. I called my voicemail and left a message for myself to document how horrible it was that during the morning drive these two jocks were oblivious to the fact that during the day they were going to get canned.

Reformating a station is nothing new, but this time it really drove home the fact radio is hurting and without customers and a physical product they can change at a moments notice. It isn’t like a candy store that has to put an item on sale to get rid of it. Radio can just stop selling the flavor for a new one that looks like it will have more customers based on market research.

As a podcaster, portable MP3 player owner (even if it won’t play in my car) and a blogger it is great to see the impact that I am having on the industries that view me as a customer. Radio’s problem isn’t that people hate the technology they use to distribute their flavors with, the problem is that they treat their listeners as customers and their loyalty to their customers only goes as far as pushing a button to allow their newly reformmated station to transmit programming via satellite from New York.

Radio tried hard to kill podcasting and a portable device movement that had already entrenched itself in our culture. Too slow to react and still reacting in ways that are sure to mean lower customer numbers, radio can learn from podcasters, bloggers and iPods.

What can they learn? Innovate.

I wrote this for a partially defunct website last December as I was trying to get a grip on just what the hell makes podcasting so appealing.

It seemed like time to rehash some of my old thoughts on the growth and beginnings of what has become a central part of my life.

Too, it seemed important based on the converstions that I, and Betsy now also, have had with Tony Kahn from Morning Stories. Tony is an amazing person with a golden voice and a perspective on life that always leads him to ask intelligent questions that beget more questions. And when you come to answer you’re never quite sure it is the right one, or even if there was a right answer to begin with.

Here’s the article; bit raw.

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December 5, 2004
Kristopher Smith

I’m a podcasting addict that will probably never get clean. So if you want to have an intervention you can forget it, because I’ve already hired a body double and a vocal impressionist to cover my tracks. I’ll be producing my show on the run or from my new Frigidaire box under the freeway, the only one with Wi-Fi. With that said, I would like to make a bold statement about podcasting, maybe just a simply analogy, but I think an effective one . . . podcasting is like streaking.

There will never be a better time to get out there and de-pants yourself. The stadium has spectators and is filling up more and more everyday as new devices are sold and articles are written about the hot new girl in town, podcasting. Doing a podcast means putting even more of yourself out there than you can ever imagine doing in a blog. A podcast is a much more personal experience. Not only will your ideas be attached, but your voice will be doing the driving instead of a reader’s inner voice. Your naked body is the driving force, to say, if we were to return to the analogy that podcasting is like streaking. So boys and girls let your junk swing.

That’s enough of that for today. I’m supposed to be introducing myself and talking a little bit about what it is that I will be doing here at PodFly. What I will be doing for PodFly is a near-daily column, article, maybe stream of consciousness that will be focused on, of course, podcasting. The articles will range from trend spotting, production, commentary, community, user experience, show format, education, hardware, software and so on.

I will make no claims that this will be easy, that I am the most articulate or intelligent person writing about podcasting. This may be one of the most difficult things that I have done, but I have been able to pull off a daily podcast, Croncast, for the last 4 weeks and am finding it easier to do as I integrate podcasting into my life. By writing these articles it is my goal to create some dialogue on various topics, as well as, teach myself how to write better and stay focused. Sometimes it can be a bit of problem for me. I’ll never buy another one again. See, it happened again.

Well, while we are all getting in line to run naked through the stadium, it will be my goal, as another nudist, to produce a daily roadmap of some of the things that we may encounter when we enter the stadium.

For the first time in a long time since we have been doing Croncast I had to edit out pieces of the show. It was really weird.

What I mean are not small pieces that usually make their way out of the show like pops or coughing but a major segment towards the end of the show. Usually we aren’t editing our selves like this and it is causing me a bit of anxiety.

During the past 10 months since we have been podcasting there have parts of the show that were never intended to go live because we were gaining our footing and working on delivery, tone and chemistry and they were cut.

This time it was very different in that once we were finished with the show both of us knew that we should remove the conversation for fear of safety. Yep, we totally crossed a line that didn’t need to be crossed that made us consider our welfare first and laughs and opinions second.

I suppose it is true we are all free to say whatever it is that we want as long as we are willing to suffer the consequences. I guess there is no suppose about it, it is all about the ramifications of spouting off.

I prefer the spoils. Like the 30 groupies that I have to fight through to enter thr front door of the house and for Betsy the 6 gay men who worship her biting wit.

The new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm a.k.a the Larry David show begins tonight on HBO.

So like many people I identify with Larry. I also like watching the show. I welcome every new season and reruns like wiping the fog from the bathroom mirror after a shower; I know what will appear in front of me and if it doesn’t make say that I look like my father or groan with disgust at how my body has turned on me, it will make me laugh.

I caught Larry on NPR’s Morning Edition plugging the new season earlier this week while I took a sip of my White Hen hot cocoa (I can’t handle coffee) and was unable to swerve fast enough to avoid a baby bird that was resting on the road. RIP. My first roadkill in the Scion.